Kitchener-Waterloo has a claim that sounds implausible until you look at the numbers: this region of 600,000 people produces more tech startups per capita than any other area in Canada, has a higher density of software engineers than Toronto, and consistently generates companies that end up on inter...

Hamilton has spent the last fifteen years becoming one of the most interesting cities in Canada, and the rest of the country is only now catching up. The steel mills that defined it for a century are still there, the billowing stacks of the Stelco and ArcelorMittal plants are still part of the skyl...

Halifax punches above its weight in almost every category. A city of 440,000 people (metro) that has a world-class waterfront, a downtown that functions at a scale its size shouldn't support, a university ecosystem (Dalhousie, King's College, SMU, NSCAD) that infuses it with the energy of a much lar...

Calgary operates under the permanent gravitational pull of the mountains. Banff is 90 minutes west. Canmore is closer. The Rockies are visible on a clear day from downtown. The outdoor recreation culture here is dominant in a way that shapes how people think about weekends and evenings, hiking, ski...

Ottawa has a reputation problem that its residents understand intimately. The federal government dominates the city's identity in the national imagination, suits, bureaucracy, politics, the kind of place you fly into for a meeting and fly out of the same afternoon. This is deeply unfair. Ottawa is ...

Everyone drives through Baton Rouge on the way to New Orleans. This is the great misfortune of Louisiana's capital city, it sits 80 miles upriver from one of the world's most famous party destinations, and many visitors treat it as a fuel stop rather than a destination. This is a mistake. Baton Rou...

Wichita is America's aviation capital, more planes have been built here than anywhere else on earth, a distinction that Boeing, Cessna, Beechcraft, and Learjet between them have maintained for a century. It's also the largest city in Kansas, a mid-sized American city of 395,000 with an art museum t...

Wilmington, North Carolina occupies an unusual position among American cities: it is simultaneously a colonial port city with architecture dating from the 1700s, one of the largest film and TV production hubs on the East Coast (EUE/Screen Gems Studios, the largest studio complex outside Hollywood, i...

Sarasota has a reputation that doesn't quite capture what it actually is. People think: retirement community, golf, Siesta Key Beach. These things are real and they have their merits. But Sarasota is also one of the strongest arts cities in Florida, the Ringling Museum of Art (with the finest colle...

Tulsa is the most architecturally surprising city in Oklahoma and possibly one of the most architecturally surprising cities in the American interior. The oil boom of the 1920s hit Tulsa at exactly the moment when Art Deco architecture was defining itself as a style, and the city's wealthiest famili...

Pensacola is often the Florida Panhandle's best-kept secret, which is strange given how long it's been here. The city was founded in 1559, sixty years before Plymouth Rock, making it the oldest European settlement in what would become the United States. The white-sand beaches of Pensacola Beach an...

Lexington is the kind of city that surprises people. They come for bourbon, the Bluegrass region is the heart of American whiskey, and the Kentucky Bourbon Trail runs through the landscape around Lexington like a well-planned pub crawl through agricultural history. Or they come for the horses, Kee...

Huntsville is one of the most interesting cities in America right now, and the rest of the country hasn't quite caught up. The fastest-growing city in Alabama, driven by aerospace, defense tech, and an influx of highly educated workers arriving at a rate that has transformed the restaurant scene, t...

Virginia Beach is a city that most people think they understand before they arrive. The beach. The boardwalk. The resort strip. And yes, those things are real and they're genuinely good, 35 miles of coastline, a boardwalk that functions as a proper urban amenity, and a beach culture that runs from ...

Tacoma has spent decades living in Seattle's shadow, and the residents will tell you, with varying degrees of pride, that this is fine. The shadow has its advantages: lower rents, shorter lines, a creative community that didn't get priced out, a city center that's been genuinely and thoughtfully r...

St. Augustine has been building mystery atmosphere since 1565. That's not a metaphor, the oldest continuously occupied European-established settlement in the United States has been accumulating stories, secrets, and genuinely strange history for over 450 years. The coquina walls of Castillo de San ...

Savannah was practically built for a murder mystery. The Spanish moss hanging from the live oaks in the squares, the antebellum mansions with their darkened upper windows, the cobblestone streets that slope toward a river with its own complicated history, this is a city that wears atmosphere the wa...

Richmond is one of those American cities that has been quietly becoming excellent for a decade while other places got the headlines. The restaurant scene is genuinely world-class in several categories. The art and music communities are disproportionately strong for a city of Richmond's size. The nei...

Raleigh is the kind of city that people move to and immediately start telling everyone else about. The Research Triangle brings in a highly educated, activity-hungry population from across the country. The restaurant scene has gone from decent to genuinely excellent over the past decade. The Warehou...

Nashville has no shortage of things to do on a Saturday night. The honky-tonks on Broadway are famous for a reason, the restaurant scene has exploded over the last decade, and there are enough rooftop bars to satisfy any altitude preference. But if you've done the usual Nashville rotation a few time...